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Flooding in Europe kills at least 150 with hundreds still missing | DW News

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Western Europe is digging out from its deadliest flooding disaster in generations.

A slow-moving low-pressure system named Bernd parked itself over Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and dumped months’ worth of rain in a matter of hours, turning quiet river valleys into torrents that swallowed entire towns. The death toll has climbed past 150, with reports pushing toward 180, and hundreds of people remain unaccounted for as rescue crews work through collapsed buildings, washed-out roads and sinkholes that opened up beneath entire streets. This is now being described as one of the worst natural disasters to hit the region in living memory.

• Germany has confirmed between 140 and 150 deaths, concentrated in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, with towns like Schuld, Ahrweiler, Erftstadt and Heinsberg devastated along the Ahr and Erft river valleys.
• Belgium has confirmed at least 20 to 27 deaths and declared a national day of mourning for Tuesday, with the Meuse and Vesdre rivers flooding Liège and surrounding Walloon communities.
• More than 10,000 residents and 200 hospital patients were evacuated in Venlo in the Dutch province of Limburg as the Meuse surged, while Valkenburg aan de Geul suffered severe structural damage.

Germany’s Ravaged River Valleys

The scale of destruction along the Ahr and Erft is difficult to overstate. Swollen rivers tore through Schuld, Ahrweiler and Erftstadt with enough force to trigger sinkholes and structural collapses, while widespread power and telecommunications outages cut off entire communities from rescue coordination just when they needed it most. Heinsberg, near the Dutch and Belgian border, was likewise hammered as floodwaters overwhelmed drainage systems built for ordinary storms, not a slow-churning system that stalled over the same ground for days.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier toured the hardest-hit municipalities and pledged financial and logistical support for rebuilding, while Chancellor Angela Merkel scheduled her own visits to the disaster zones. More than 15,000 emergency personnel — including Bundeswehr military units, police and regional rescue squads — have been deployed nationwide to search for survivors, clear debris and reopen severed transport corridors.

Over 140 confirmed dead in Germany alone, concentrated in towns along the Ahr and Erft where swollen rivers triggered sinkholes and building collapses.

Belgium’s Day of Mourning

In Belgium, the death toll of at least 20, with some counts as high as 27, led the federal government to declare a national day of mourning for the Tuesday following the disaster. Walloon regions bore the worst of it, with the Meuse and Vesdre rivers bursting their banks and inundating Liège, a city whose streets turned into rushing channels of brown water carrying cars and debris downstream.

The Netherlands Braces Downstream

As the Meuse pushed north into the Netherlands, authorities in the southern province of Limburg ordered the emergency evacuation of more than 10,000 residents in Venlo, along with 200 patients transferred out of a local hospital ahead of the rising water. The town of Valkenburg aan de Geul sustained severe structural destruction as the river overwhelmed its historic center, one of several Dutch communities left scrambling to shore up defenses before the surge fully arrived.

A Rescue Effort Still Racing the Clock

With hundreds still missing across the three countries, the priority for the 15,000-plus emergency personnel on the ground remains locating survivors before further structural failures or secondary flooding complicate an already chaotic search. Power and communications outages in the worst-hit German valleys continue to slow that work, and officials in Berlin, Brussels and The Hague are all bracing for the death toll to rise further as crews reach areas that have been cut off since the water first surged.